TruEffect Blog

The Good News and the Bad News

According to Emily Steel of the Wall Street Journal in her article “More Digital Ads are Produced Offshore”, Madison Avenue is jumping on the outsourcing bandwagon with its digital ad production. Agencies interviewed cite both cheaper labor AND the fact that “most ad agencies can't find enough talent in the U.S. to fill their needs.”  If you’re an out of work graphic designer, this might want to make you smash your new MacBook Air.  On the other hand, could this finally give advertisers access to the quick and affordable creative necessary to forge bravely (and profitably) ahead in the digital frontier?

Micro-versioning, micro-segmentation, micro-targeting, and personalization are no longer just the buzz words of the day. As online advertising technology advances, the idea of actually sending a customized creative/message to a known user in zero point seven seconds (OK, maybe not on dial up but do we really care about those people?) is not only possible, but even preferable (see Michael Estrin’s article “Are users lost in a sea of ad networks”)  Will cheaper ad production actually help me find relevance in a sea of online Karenia brevis algae? (red tide, yes, I Googled it)  If so, Costa Rican and Ukrainian labor is looking pretty good right about now. As long as it’s not my job, right?

- Layne Salter

Don't get stuck on the treadmill

It’s often too easy to get stuck on the treadmill of affiliates, search, comparison shopping, and network media buys to step back and think about how best to keep improving the value you deliver to clients. 

In the last few months as we prepared and launched DirectServe, we’ve been paying close attention to some of the issues facing interactive media planners and have come up with some interesting observations.

Of course we want to sell you something, but we also think there is value having some outside perspectives that may help your thoughts around how to reduce costs and improve the yield from media. An interesting article today to check out is from Tom Hespos, President of Underscore Marketing, "Is it time to reconsider first-party cookies?” 

Top 5 indicators you might be stuck on the treadmill:

1. You don't fully understand how your investments are truly performing  - you're stuck on a “Last click wins" mentality. 

2. You don’t have the tools to do anything about it, and will continue to waste acquisition dollars on people to which you've already sold.

3. You live with unattributed or wrongly attributed response rates of 40%+, when better methods exist.

4. Your strategies continue trying to sell to customers, instead of helping them to buy, by using data you already have at your disposal right now.

5. You continue to commit resources to address flaws in your vendors' system work flows that are eating up valuable margin dollars.

Join the unstuck, and enjoy more success. :-)

- Martin Smith